6:47pm EST - New foundation steps also:

5:44pm EST - Aaand we crashed again. Decided to wipe and lower slots. Hopefully it's a bit more stable now.

5:27pm EST - Some notes on the latest update. First of all, other players and animals are definitely smoother (especially at close distances), that is good. Also, the stair model is in (see below). Unfortunately, we have had two crashes so far. These come in the form of server console spam of: REALM STACK IS : 17 (number varies and goes up). This happens continuously until the server drops everyone. I've loaded the map both times successfully (although it takes a couple minutes to load 20k+ entities). That being said, if it happens again, I will wipe because it is possible this error is being caused by something on the map from before the update. I've messaged Garry the logs.

4:50pm EST - Server just went down with a bunch of console errors. Just restarted and loaded the map, we're back up now.

3:56pm EST - A server / client update just launched. It appears to include most of the changes listed below. Testing further now.

2:10pm EST - We’re almost to the end of this week in Rust development. Some big updates so far, and, the game appears to be in a more stable place than it has been in weeks. Still, there are issues and much more work to be done.

State of the game

I was hesitant to report it yesterday, however, after going a full 24 hours without one, I’m very happy to say: The mass drops are fixed! Thank you Garry! I slept a whole night and didn’t have to wake up once to manually restart the server, fucking awesome! Also, it appears this weeks updates have resolved the issues with server performance going to shit if people build too much, too quick. On top of that, the duping and cupboard exploits are no longer possible. Overall, awesome week so far.

Now, you know how this works, I can’t just give all good news. Some new bugs have been introduced, many of which have already been addressed and will be fixed in the next update. One potential biggy is this: The server stops with no error or message in console - the process just appears to stop responding. Then, on restart when trying to load the map, it loads about 90% of the entities then just hangs. This happened to us and at least one other popular community server last night. The only fix was to wipe the map.

For us, this occurred around the 10 hour and 22,000 entity mark. I sent Garry the save files so hopefully he can recreate and track down the problem. I will monitor the situation today and post updates as I have them. In the mean time, if the server goes down for a couple minutes and comes back with a fresh map, this was likely the culprit.

The missing piece

I was getting a lot of reports of hackers no clipping yesterday. After further investigation, it became clear, these were not hackers, just people not seeing building parts which are visible for other players. There was a second, smaller client update yesterday which may have caused the incongruence. However, according to Garry, that is improbable. It is more likely a networking fuck-up somewhere. He's on the look out for a source and solution. In the mean time, if someone jumps straight through a wall in your house, try not to get distracted by calling hacks, focus on killing the fucker!

Demolition

Speaking of walls, can they be demolished now? The answer for wood appears to be: Yes, with a group of 3 or more. Salvaged weapons appear to be the most efficient, all doing roughly the same damage. Bullets also deal damage, however, they are not a very realistic solution given the expense. Stone walls appear to be pretty much indestructible at the moment. Note: I have not tested this personally, it is all based on what I’ve heard. I do plan on getting in a test server tonight with a group to get some more solid numbers on this stuff. Regardless, the long and short, raiding is currently a group activity.

Player jerkiness

Since the update on Tuesday, other players have been noticeably jerkier. This is a function of lerp. "What is lerp?" It’s the total amount of client side interpolation in milliseconds. "What the hell does that mean?" Basically, it deals with how smooth other players and animals appear. Garry has been working on unfucking this by making lerping more sophisticated. He’s also added some cvars for fakeloss and fakelag which will allow him to see how lerp is handled in non ideal situations. Given all this, player movement should be much smoother after the next update hits.

Damage type changes

Maurino has been tweaking some things with damage, making it so melee weapons can now distribute multiple types of damage. This allows for animals to be more susceptible to some damage types (i.e., the spear does double damage to an animal). Pretty sweet, not only does this give us more robust damage calculations, animals won’t be so fucking hard to kill!

Animal changes

Zon is rocking out a whole shitload of changes to the animal AI. He’s made them run closer to their real life speeds and they are only able gallop for certain distances. On top of that, he made it so animals which spawn at the same time no longer think in unison. Oh, he also fixed the thing where they would sleep walk around the forest. I’m loving these smarter animals.

Weapon animations

Minh has been making some changes to the weapon animations. Most notably, he has added some new firing animations for weapons which you can aim down the sight (bascially, all guns). Also, he has tweaked the amount of shake when firing. I think we can all agree, the less head bob, the better!

Double hand spear hold

Minh has also added animations for a double hand hold on the spear. No video of this has surfaced yet on Trello but I’ll keep my eyes peeled.

Lighthouse bigger

The other day, I remarked on how, although the lighthouse looks great, it's too damn small (what is this, a lighthouse for ants!). Thankfully, my prayers have been answered. Daniel has made a first pass today at scaling up the lighthouse. Hell yeah, thank you Daniel!

Pickaxe changes

Alex made a first pass at the sounds for the pickaxe. Also, Maurino tweaked some of the damage stats for this bad boy. Not sure the specific result of this but I’ll be sure to test it out on the dev branch.

Protocol++

A couple hours ago we saw the fateful protocol++ commit. As many of you may know, this means a wipe will be forced on the next update. When will the next update be? As always, your guess is as good as mine (often better). Personally, I’d be really happy if some of these fixes were released before we went into the weekend (the jerky player interactions especially is a real bummer).

Correction from Garry: Protocol++ doesn't actually mean a wipe is needed, it usually means the client and server are no longer compatible with old versions. 

Sorry for any confusion!